Look at Applicant's Past to Best Determine Future

Monday

Sep 15, 2008 at 8:10 AMSep 15, 2008 at 8:24 AM

J. Lenora Bresler

Interviewing applicants for an open position with your business can be a harrowing experience. Candidates lie. Candidates inflate their credentials and invent references. Candidates can, without actually lying, word resumes to imply things that aren't the truth.

It doesn't help that often we employers are so desperate to get a person into the position that we are tempted to accept any warm body. Sometimes we consciously or unconsciously omit questions that we should ask because we secretly fear the potential candidate will "mess up" and give an unacceptable answer, thereby canceling our hopes that we have at last found someone who "will do."

The result of our poor interviewing is that we hire people who lack: a full comprehension of the expectations; an adequate understanding of the job; and any real confidence - either on their part or ours - that they have the skills and background it takes to be successful in that particular job.

The idea that a person will be an effective interviewer just because they are personable and curious could not be further from the truth. Although such a personality may have the effect of putting applicants at ease, it may actually be a hindrance because effective interviewing is actually more about plodding through a simple process than it is about having exciting personal connections with strangers.

Today it is generally accepted that the most effective interviewing process is behaviorally based interviewing. This kind of questioning is based on the premise that the best predictor of future behavior is specific past experience. In other words, if a sales position requires that the salesperson be able to persuade a customer to purchase a luxury item, the best indicator of potential success is if the applicant has a proven track record being able to do just that.

Of course, applicants may be able to learn and people obviously gain new skills as they go along, but the BEST indicator of future success remains whether someone has been successful in something similar.

There are three steps to behaviorally based interviewing:

First, prior to the interview, the manager reviews the (hopefully) up-to-date job description of the position at issue, as well as a blank evaluation form by which the successful applicant will eventually be appraised. From a review of those two documents, the manager identifies four or five key competencies, also known as critical success factors. These factors are those skills or traits that an employee must master in order to be a star in that position. Notice I said a "star," not merely what it takes to be an adequate enough performer to remain employed. Sometimes those critical success factors are also minimum requirements for even getting the job - in other words, qualifications.

For example, if you were hiring for a spokesperson position for your business, clearly one of the critical success factors of that position would be good communication skills, primarily verbal persuasive skills. It is fairly obvious that the successful candidate would need to have those skills from day one; hence, verbal persuasive skills is not only a critical success factor but a job qualification.

However, knowledge mastery of your product line may be something that, although it must be mastered eventually, does not have to be perfect in order for the individual to obtain the position.

What you would want to know in the interview about this second factor is how an applicant has mastered previously unknown subject matter.

Once a manager has identified the four or five most important factors on which he or she will interview, the interview itself becomes a rather straight-forward process. The manager simply asks the same basic formulaic question repeatedly: "Tell me about a specific time when you displayed . . ." The applicant then fills in each critical success factor.

This is really the only safe conversation you can have with an applicant to be sure you don't possibly run afoul of discrimination laws.

The only thing that complicates this seemingly simple interview strategy is that applicants often do not speak in specific terms.

Some applicants, having been warned not to be cocky, answer questions about their own roles by referring to "the team" or "we," thereby obscuring the precise nature of the individual's role.

Other interviewees, perhaps flustered by the unexpected questions, struggle to think of examples, and interviewers, feeling awkward about the silence, hurry to move to other questions or start prodding applicants with possible answers.

Some applicants, rather than refer to specific past examples of their conduct, speak in futurist or hypothetical terms about "what I would do" or "my approach" or "my philosophy."

The interviewer, therefore, must be insistent that the applicant provide detail when answering. Each example given by the applicant should contain three parts: an understandable statement of the context or situation; a precise recitation of what actions the candidate took; and the measurable results that occurred because of the applicant's actions.

When one or more parts of that complete answer is not provided, the interviewer must follow up with simple, but nonetheless vital, questions like, "What specifically was your role?" or "What happened because of your actions?" or "You say you were well-thought-of because of your sales ability. In what way were you recognized?"

There are several good aspects to this kind of interviewing.

First, by the end of the session, a manager has amassed solid, legally-defensible, job-related evidence on which to base an opinion about the likelihood of the applicant's ability to perform.

Second, by focusing on these job-based questions, the interviewer has likely not strayed into legally questionable topics such as marital status, age or race.

Third, by forcing the applicant to be specific, the interview process itself helps the applicant see whether he or she is suited or prepared for a particular job.

In short, behaviorally based interviewing allows everyone involved in the interview process to proceed into the decision-making stage confident in the knowledge that they understand exactly what skills it will take to be a successful employee. Who can ask for more?

[ J. Lenora Bresler is a lawyer, speaker, trainer and author on leadership. She is a senior certified human resource professional and a professional speaker with the National Speakers Association. Her specialties are motivation, change, conflict resolution, strategic planning and diversity. She is the author of "Mission Possible" with Stephen Covey and Brian Tracy, "The Best of the Best," and "Instant Insight." Bresler lives in Lakeland. She can be reached at www.jlenorabresler.com. ]

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